Asus mobo + AIO cooler, which headers to use?

CorneliousJD · November 20, 2020

Hi guys, running a new build finally but i have a question on how I set it up.

The ASUS Hero VIII WiFi board has 3 headers by CPU

CPU_FAN

CPU_FANopt

AIO_PUMP

Right now I have the Corsair H115i Platinum, so the AIO plugs into the AIO header, and then the fans actually plug into that lead that comes off the AIO pump.

Am I not doing this right? I know the H115i manual says to plug it into CPU_FAN header, but most mobo's i've dealth with in the past didn't have a speicfic header for AIO pump.

I did get CPU fan warnings when origianlly booting but I disabled them in BIOS.

Right now running the fans in quiet mode from iCUE I get a CPU package temp of 49-55c according to ASUS tools.

The actual iCUE says my temp on H115i is 29c

Making sure I have this setup correctly, or in a way that's not going to be a detrement to any cooling.

Processor is 5950X

iCUE

ASUS AI

Hairless Monkey Boy · November 20, 2020

You got it right.

CorneliousJD · November 20, 2020

2 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

You got it right.

Thanks for confirming the hookup is right.

I am still a bit confused about the temps. It looks like iCUE is giving me the COOLANT temp and not CPU temp. Is there a way I can change that?

Also still slightly confused by the two differnet reading by ASUS AI, one says 39 the other says 50, CPU vs CPU package? I would think they'd be closer together?

Hairless Monkey Boy · November 20, 2020

44 minutes ago, CorneliousJD said:

Thanks for confirming the hookup is right.

I am still a bit confused about the temps. It looks like iCUE is giving me the COOLANT temp and not CPU temp. Is there a way I can change that?

Also still slightly confused by the two differnet reading by ASUS AI, one says 39 the other says 50, CPU vs CPU package? I would think they'd be closer together?

No problem, and good questions!

The coolant temp is actually a better way of controlling your fans since the temperature of your CPU will depend linearly on the temperature of your coolant. IE, under the same load, your CPU will reach 70°C with a coolant tempt of 20°C and will reach 80°C with a coolant temp of 30°C. The benefit is that you can eliminate sudden unnecessary spikes in fan RPM since the liquid in your loop heats and cools slowly over time, unlike the CPU which heats and cools rapidly with changing load. I have a custom loop, but I control my fans based on my fluid temp for this reason. To answer your question directly, I do not know if you can change what temperature sensor the fan controller uses. For my wife's build, I opted to use Ai Suite rather than iCUE to control her CPU fans so that they would spin more in sync with the other system fans. I use the "fan spin up time" & "fan spin down time" feature to eliminate the unnecessary fan speed spikes I mentioned before. Though, I have considered connecting all of her fans to the AIO pump so that they can be controlled based on the fluid temp.

As for Asus Ai Suite, one of the CPU temperatures that it reports is sort of a black box. As I understand it, there is a formula that Asus uses to calculate that temp based on several different temperature sensors. Personally, I've never been a fan of this approach. As far as CPU Core vs CPU package temperature go, these two sensors are not in the same region and can be quite different. The CPU Core temperature sensors are inside the CPU right next to each core. The CPU Package temperature sensor is usually a motherboard sensor located near the CPU socket, and so the temperature it reports is usually much lower.